Catalysts should burn up after one use

I believe what is determined as awesome lies in the eye of the beholder, I personally prefer nukes over everything else, of course since they can be countered in PA, it is sad

Somewhere inbetween a planet and a nuke? No, they're exactly like a smashable planet. Different asteroids are different sizes. Some will be small, some will be large. Just like some planets are larger and smaller than others.

Cooldown, charge with energy, etc...
Dudes seriously, so you think the laser need another warning + alert + time to defend against.
OK, so what about halleys ? Yes, you can send planet right when they are built. Not enough time isn't it ?

As I said, if you are not able to do something while it's being built, that means you're far behind. No need to make the game last 30 minutes more.

Only thing I admit is both catalyst/halleys must be easy destroyable buildings, with low life. I haven't nuked catalyst yet, as I was never overpowered by a turtle.

I'm not guilty if your ennemies don't understand they need to fight the laser builder first, or they'll all be destroyed without even a fight. It will be in all minds soon, I think.

Haven't you tried to snipe/invade the comm ? Usually everybody is concentrated in one task, and comm is really exposed. If you haven't tried, the laser is not the problem, the problem is the way you think to win the game.

The point I'd the annihilaser is exactly the same as a halleyd planet, only with unlimited uses.

Part of me wants a better balance to the metal worlds.

Another part of me wants player to realise that catalyst construction is a very, very good reason to drop what they are doing at utterly annihilate the catalyst player at all costs.

IP nukes are expensive, and need to be used with extensive scouting, halleys are at the expense of a perfectly good planet.

We just need to teach players how to invade metal worlds.

You are completely missing my points.

To reiterate a few of them, everyone fighting over one thing to get an insta win is boring, binary, and lacking in strategy.

Having a focus on massive armies has much more strategic depth than an insta win structure.

well while shields can stop the Mavor and it don't destroy a part of the map, it can denny anything that it can fire upon!

In the case of the Annihilaser, it could have a cooldown of 1 minute for example, the time needed to make an army and try to invade the Metal Planet, and use a lot of energy, this way you can at least delay your enemy by killing he energy
Pros would be:
- can kill any planet, and end the game
cons would be:
- need a lot of energy(depending on the reload time you would be able to get the energy befor it can fire again, like SoaSE super weapons)

I do like the idea of it taking energy to fire up the Annihilaser. This would force the player to shut off all factories and radar, etc to build up enough energy reserve to power the Annihilaser. Would also give further reason to utilise energy storage. This sort of things adds in a risk/reward factor. I also think the commander should have to enter into a command module to activate the final fire sequence. Again this would give a risk/reward factor because if people know the commander is needed to fire up the Annihilaser then this increases the risk of a Commander snipe because people would know the commander has to be somewhere around that area.

If Annialasers are meant to be a game-ending build once complete, no exceptions, How about instead of forcing us to avoid metal planets for those who prefer the "vanilla" mode, the catalysts are only active in a "planetary monuments" game mode, where every planet type has something grand to distinguish it from the others, and everyone starts on asteroids. Requiring a commander to run them is also a decent idea, Commanders need more things to do in the late game.


In the lava planet, A buried precursor mech that you need to plug in a commander to the control chair to run. Invulnerable to anything smaller than a few nukes, slow, and short ranged weapons, and able to shift from the land/sea layer to the orbital one. It's main function would be to drop in and disrupt orbital defenses to help make a beachhead, or just go around dropping the enemy's buildrate.

A proper water planet with little to no land could have an arctic iceball launcher, effectively giving the commander on it a small nuke every minute or so.

And so on. King of the hill is boring in the long run, especially when pulling down the current king can become so quickly impossible.

Better to innovate and make four or half a dozen different hills available to climb, and then make game modes which easily enable each planetary epic, and RNG up a map with the desired planet types, and then start each team on their own asteroid.

Unless they add a risk/reward scenario...

I like the idea of it taking energy to fire up the Annihilaser. This would force the player to shut off all factories and radar, etc to build up enough energy reserve to power the Annihilaser. Would also give further reason to utilise energy storage. This sort of things adds in a risk/reward factor. I also think the commander should have to enter into a command module to activate the final fire sequence. Again this would give a risk/reward factor because if people know the commander is needed to fire up the Annihilaser then this increases the risk of a Commander snipe because people would know the commander has to be somewhere around that area.

The Annihilaser is awesome, there just needs to be more ways to counter it. I think it just highlights how difficult invading another planet can be. If you have two players with massive armies on each planet, there needs to be a better way for the armies to clash. At the moment it's too hard to make a beach head.

It would seem the Annihilaser is too cheap and too hard to counter. I think my ideas above are good, but the energy/mex cost of the Annihilaser isn't enough to make any counters viable (i.e. Halleys vs Annihilaser cost). It needs to be cheaper to send a planet smash at the Annihilaser and there also needs to be some sort anti-planetsmash counter (like in the kickstarter video). Therefore risk/reward decision, do I put all my build power into the Annihilaser, or do I spend some on defences to a planet smash. There's so many possible options which would make this more exciting and nail biting.

Oh geez... This is why I personally believe the Annihilaser shoulda been released earlier. Everyone likes it, but apparently it's too OP. I don't think so, in anyway... It took me 3 games against normal AI before I actually managed to shoot the darn thing because I'm so noob. If I'm allowed to throw my opinion in, the only thing it should do is somehow MAJORLY effect your economy. If it is supposed to be a game ender than using it should be the end of the game, a player wouldn't wantonly fire off the laser if, per se. It completely drained energy reserves for about a minute and you required... atleast 100k energy to fire. How's that for balance? Oh also, when is my team color annihilaser gonna come out? XD (Talking to modders)

Except when your eco gets abolished you probably wont get enough of a force in a minute to effect anything, and whoever owns the laser can just spam up whatever was lost extremely fast. It would just mean a loss a minute later, and if the cooldown was enough time to be able to re-eco and rebuild then the laser isn't a game-ender anymore

which is why the thing needs a drawback rather than a cooldown, similar to what the haley has.
What if when you fired the laser, the planet got EMP'd for 45 seconds? Everything paused for 45 seconds no eco, no production, no protection, nothing. Simply a small window that can be exploited by the enemy albeit not easily

whatever they do, I just want more of a choice then a "win the game button".

Then why go for a moveable planet when I could get something extremely better for similar costs?

I agree with you, it invalidates planet smashes.

In range? It's a PLANET-SIZED PARTICLE CANNON. If it's in the same system, it's in range.

Random, but didn't the death star have a charge up time of a whole day or something? (I heard someone mention it)

The first one did. The second Death Star had an improved reactor:

Ooh, PA's Annihilaser is on the northern hemisphere as well.

Nobody gets Star Wars wrong on my watch. Not you, not eroticburrito, nobody.

I technically... wasn't wrong though.

You were vague CLOSE ENOUGH.